Ponkapog Papers [14]
room with Turkey-red curtains, I like to believe, and a rare engraving of a scene from Mr. Ho- garth's excellent moral of "The Industrious and Idle Apprentices" pinned against the chimney breast. Young Chatterton, who was not always the best of company, dropped in at intervals. There Mr. Samuel Pepys had a special chair reserved for him by the window, where he could catch a glimpse of the pretty housemaid over the way, chatting with the policeman at the area railing. Dr. Johnson and the unworldly author of "The Deserted Village" were frequent visit- ors, sometimes appearing together arm-in-arm, with James Boswell, Esq., of Auchinleck, fol- lowing obsequiously behind. Not that Tom Folio did not have callers vastly more aristo- cratic, though he could have had none plea- santer or wholesomer. Sir Philip Sidney (who must have given Folio that copy of the "Arca- dia"), the Viscount St. Albans, and even two or three others before whom either of these might have doffed his bonnet, did not disdain to gather round that hearthstone. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Defoe, Dick Steele, Dean Swift--there was no end to them! On certain nights, when all the stolid neighborhood was lapped in slumber, the narrow street stretching beneath Tom Folio's windows must have been blocked with invisible coaches and sedan-chairs, and illuminated by the visionary glare of torches borne by shadowy linkboys hurrying hither and thither. A man so sought after and companioned cannot be described as lonely. My memory here recalls the fact that he had a few friends less insubstantial--that quaint anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ, to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his apple; and the brown-legged little Neapolitan who was always nearly certain of a copper when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a Saturday afternoon--Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day. The withered woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil Hall Market knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant, whom Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy traffic of Dock Square. No- blesse oblige! He was no stranger in those purlieus. Without designing to confuse small things with great, I may say that a certain strip of pavement in North Street could be pointed out as Tom Folio's Walk, just as Addison's Walk is pointed out on the banks of the Cher- well at Oxford. I used to observe that when Tom Folio was not in quest of a print or a pamphlet or some such urgent thing, but was walking for mere recreation, he instinctively avoided respectable latitudes. He liked best the squalid, ill-kept thoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tene- ment-houses and teeming with unprosperous, noisy life. Perhaps he had, half consciously, a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess and cheerful resignation of it all. Returning home from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old Boston--as genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself --a personality not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never happen again!
Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town, I miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change, but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering the doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down a musty volume from its shelf at some melan- choly old book-stall on Cornhill.
FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our country- men into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable desire to present something typi- cal in the way of names for his adopted char- acters--to give a dash of local color, as it were, with his nomenclature. His success is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls into the error of appealing to his invention, instead of consulting some city
Strolling to-day through the streets of the older section of the town, I miss many a venerable landmark submerged in the rising tide of change, but I miss nothing quite so much as I do the sight of Tom Folio entering the doorway of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefully taking down a musty volume from its shelf at some melan- choly old book-stall on Cornhill.
FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES
WHEN an English novelist does us the honor to introduce any of our country- men into his fiction, he generally displays a commendable desire to present something typi- cal in the way of names for his adopted char- acters--to give a dash of local color, as it were, with his nomenclature. His success is seldom commensurate to the desire. He falls into the error of appealing to his invention, instead of consulting some city